Sunday Summary – April 4, 2015

Here are the week’s posts on streets.mn smartly summarized for your reading convenience. Madness of two kinds this week: April Fools posts and continuing the basketball-inspired, urban-themed madness continues with the outcomes in streets.m(ad)n(ess) Round 3 – The Streets Sixteen and Round 4 – The Urban Elitist Eight. Just as you can play streets.m(ad)n(ess), there’s another opportunity for participation this week (until April 17) in Great Cities – A Science Museum of Minnesota project where you are invited to “take a picture of an object, feature, place or phenomenon in the Twin Cities that you think reveals how some aspect of the future is beginning to appear in the present. Then tell us a very brief story about that future.” If you don’t want to send a picture to the Science Museum, you could write for streets.mn and tell us your story about your present, past or future city.

April Fooling

Yes, Wednesday was April 1st and April Fools with these foolish posts, most of which still offer some useful critique of the transportation and land use landscape in Minnesota:

Bigger issues

The Critical Ten (miles per hour) takes a deep look at how reducing speed from 30 to 20 miles per hour can significantly improve safety and then takes a tour of a few Twin Cities locations to consider what design, land use and other features help reduce speed (or not)

Reduce Affordable Housing Need in Three Steps is part 3 in a series on the rental housing market and rents (Here are part 1, “How I Set Apartment Rents,” and part 2, “Housing Markets? Humbug!). This installment makes three recommendations coupled with some policy changes to help increase the supply of affordable housing. This summary can’t do the series justice (and social justice is critical in this series), but politicians as well as advocates should be reading this.

By next week, perhaps the madness (or m(ad)n(ess)) will have ended, but in the meantime you should all be out on your bikes for#30daysofbiking or otherwise enjoying streets in Minnesota (or beyond). Have a great week!